Immediately increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour (1 April 2012) and peg it at two-thirds of the average wage (1 April 2013).

I guess someone has to outbid Labour/Greens who think higher wages come from legislation rather than economic growth. But Mana’s policy is even more stupid than the norm. Think about their pegging it to two thirds of the average wage.

In June 2011, it was $24.78, so two thirds is $16.52. So Mana’s policy is it should be illegal for a 16 year old to be hired for less than $34,500 a year.

But their policy will lead to never-ending increases, as if you increase the minimum wage, then you automatically increase the average wage. So even if there was nil wage growth for everyone else, the minimum wage would be going up.

If their policy was to peg it to the median wage, then it would just be moderately stupid rather than idiotically stupid.

I don’t know why parties of the left bother with all this in between crap. Why don’t they just come out and announce a minimum wage of $25/hr?

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 7:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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27 Responses to “Mana’s inflation policy”

Your analysis leaves out the other important element – in order to peg at 2/3rds of the average wage it is very important to bring down those earning above average incomes. This is of course much simpler than trying to raise the minimum.

[DPF: You have a point on Board remuneration – if they all aim for the median, it pushes them up. I have seen this happen. That is why many Boards (outside NZX50) though aim for lower quartile to avoid that]

Im absolutely certain the parties of the left have undertaken extensive and rigorous research that confirms that every company in NZ can afford $15 per hour. After all, us business owners are all profit taking bastards, arent we? Driving around in our Audis.

While Mana’s policy is pretty stupid, this criticism is coming from the mouthpiece of a party that has promised to use the proceeds from asset sales three times over – paying down debt, keeping the income on the books AND upgrading schools and hospitals. John Key is the real economic wizard if he’s able to use the one lot of proceeds three times over

This concept is akready used to define ‘poverty’ as cited by ‘child poverty’ lobbyists. A NZ family living in ‘poverty’ would be regarded as living in luxury in the Third World. Such poverty would never be resolved as improvements merely raise the ‘cut off’evel.

So using your logic, DPF, why is it “idiotically stupid” for it to be illegal to hire an employee at less than $34,500 but perfectly sane for it to be illegal to hire an employee at less than $27,000 ($13/hour minimum wage, which it is at the moment). Are you suggesting that there are some jobs not worth $34,500 per annum, but there are no jobs worth less than $27,000 per annum?

The fact is there are some jobs not worth $13 per hour. You are attacking the communists and their fellow-travellers, but you agree with them in principle. All you’re arguing about is the configuration, not the concept. The hypocrisy reeks.

@The Gantt Guy: It’s not the amount, it’s the fact it’d be a never ending spiral. The next year it’d be $38,000, then $41,000, and so on (numbers pulled out of thin air BTW). The problem is that it’s based on an index which would be altered by the resultant change. Pegging it to the median would work – assuming less than 50% of people are on the minimum wage.

@Philu: You also bring up their financial transaction tax. The issue here is the profits might be quite small, say, 2%. Putting a 1% charge on this will destroy their margin and greatly reduce the amount of transactions – I’d wager it wouldn’t return half of what they’re hoping for.

you have never been right in any political prediction you have made on this blog. Your living in a fantasy world. You do not engage in political analysis, you engage in fantasies that have no basis in reality.

Proportion of children with equivalised disposable household income < 50% or <60% current median

Using this "definition", "child poverty" and poverty as such will NEVER be solved unless we are all either equally rich or equally poor.
And THAT is the real goal when they talk about ending "Child Poverty".

@Other_Andy: You can quite happily have everyone earning more than 50 or 60% of the current median. No need for everyone to be anywhere near equal to achieve that, and certainly no need for the top end to be anywhere near the bottom end.